From Victim to Heroine

This is the new theme for my life, and it is overflowing out into my work with women.

From Victim to Heroine…

I am realizing it is not about eradicating the Victim role that lives inside…that archetype is there. And she is there in all of us in one degree or another. The gift is in consciously opening up and allowing her voice to be heard…

- “this sucks. why is this so hard? i hold myself to such high standards and then i feel like a failure. why is it so easy for him? why does he get all the attention? i just can’t do anything right. i feel so trapped in this situation.”

And then I get to hold and hear myself with love and compassion…I get to “rescue” myself with the unconditional regard that I can bring to myself. “Maitri” – a Buddhist term which means “loving kindness”. I get to practice Maitri for myself.

As my inner Victim feels heard and held, I get to shift…another perspective gets to come through. I get to hear the voice of my inner Heroine. She is bold and strong and gentle and tender. She understands the Victim. And she – I – get to remind myself of the gifts and resources that I have that are available to me: my power, my strength, my confidence. These gifts empower my Victim, and remind her/me that she is not alone, and that there is a way forward and beyond this current “prison”.

From Victim to Heroine…embracing it all, practicing choice, and in so doing, empowering ourselves.

Step by Step

I woke up this morning, grateful to remember a most delicious thing…

I know what actions to take today to move forward in growing my business
AND
those actions are just the obvious, small, next steps…they don’t need to be anything grand with accompanying fireworks!

What a relief!

Being in a new City and growing my coaching practice here has definitely been overwhelming at times. There are moments when I get overtaken by the inner “race car” and feel like there is SO much to do, how will I ever tend to it all in this life time?! And then there are moments when I wonder, what the hell do I do now? and feel rather lost.

And then I remember the wisdom that I share with other women when rebuilding their lives…one step at a time, one brick in that foundation at a time…and the lesson becomes one of patience and commitment…

I see the vision for what I want to create in my life…I feel that vision. And each day I get to spend time hanging out with that vision and feeling it, becoming more of the woman that I need to be to manifest that vision…. AND I get to spend time feeling the creative tension that exists in my life because that vision is not YET so…and that is the fuel that furthers me onward…taking the small steps I need to take so that one day I will walk my way into that vision.

Step by step.

YES!

Riding Another Wave

I have washed up on the shores of my life after yet another wave took me for a ride this past week.

I was attached to an outcome, which connected into my sense of purpose, survival, and value.

The actual outcome was something other than what I had expected – it was my “worst-case scenario”.

Big disappointment. Big lessons learned.

The “real”  outcome sent me into a wave…a dance with the familiar inner players of fear, anxiety, and doubt.

However, they were joined by trust, commitment, and compassion. Oh, and that ever-faithful resilience.

I have had a week of treading water. The current carried me along and I surrendered. I didn’t know where I was going…I needed to pause and re-assess. What was this situation showing me? What was I having the opportunity to see, learn, understand? It was definitely an opportunity to evolve.

I spent the week both diving inward, allowing for extra time and space to write, journey, and meditate, as well as moving forward in growing my connections with colleagues and allies. I knew I needed a dynamic balance of inner and outer support.

In this past week, I trusted that the fog and depression were friends that I could trust…I allowed their voices to speak, their textures to be felt. The biggest gift and lesson came in letting them be heard and experienced without drowning in all the layers of stories and beliefs that come along for the ride in this time of vulnerability.

And for now, the fog has lifted. This arc of transition has come to a close, delivering me on the shore with an evolved vision of where I am headed as well as clarity on my next steps. Thank you. Yes to this vision and Yes to this journey!

International Women’s Day

I had the good fortune of gathering together with a circle of beautiful, powerful, and dynamic women tonight in honor of International Women’s Day. I feel so fed and inspired by all the connections I made with these women. A few are women whom I already know, most are women that I just met tonight for the first time. Women…we are such juicy, inspiring, dynamic, relational beings. Fill a home with us and we know how to fill it with good food, rich dialogue, ringing laughter, empathic nods, affection, and so much more. Yummy!

My community here is growing so fast – in leaps and bounds. I feel so grateful to be in this City that is opening up her doors to me every where I look! Thank you to the Women, to the City, and to the greater movement that is weaving all of our webs together! Thank you!

May we all continue to feel our connections with one another as Sisters. May we feel the support and nourishment available to us through these webs that we weave. In collaboration we bring forth to our communities that which is needed. Yes!

Offering to the Ocean

Today I am headed to the ocean. This will be my first visit to the expansive mama since my move to SF just over a month ago. I need to mark all the changes and choices that have brought me to this point. I have walked my path with courage and commitment to living in alignment. Each choice I make sets my inner and outer worlds in motion…changes in each dimension reflect and in turn influence changes in the other.

I stand today a solo woman committed to my path, my soul calling, my passions. I feel my power as a woman, a vessel, a creator of change. I am choosing to live my life fully…passionately…authentically. This is my life to call my own…this is my own precious life…and I am choosing to live with unconditional love and grace.

I have an offering to bring to the ocean today: my moon flow. I collected my blood during my first cycle in the City. In releasing this to the ocean I release the old forms in my life: the relationship, the town, the hair, the limiting beliefs, the fears and insecurities. I release all of that by choice. I let go.

I stand in the emptiness and feel the space within and around me. I choose this. I feel all that is here to feel: grief, tenderness, love.

I open up and fill this space with love, with commitment to my path, with faith, with belief in myself and the greater life force that guides and moves me forward. There is an expansion already happening. I breathe in deeper. I breathe out more fully. I am alive. I am empowered. I stand in choice. I stand in my truth. Yes.

Choice – It’s where it’s at!

I love how I get the opportunity in life, again and again, to face old stories and make a choice…do I want to respond to this situation and this story in the same old way, thereby getting triggered and caught up in a big knot inside myself? Or do I choose to keep breathing and feeling and moving my way through the rawness and into the choice of trust, faith, surrender, and grace. Choosing my power, choosing my truth, choosing to trust my way.

Choice…it is quite potent and really, really where it’s at.

Learning new choices…exploring all options…developing new pathways…

Exercising Choice…letting go of default, habit, the old familiar ways…exercising conscious choice again and again.

Empowerment. It’s where “it’s” at…the pulse, the opportunity, the juice…to life life more fully.

Yes to that!

I have come a long way, baby!

I sit here on the last day of Febraury, 2009, and feel delighted by how far I have come in the past month. On February 4th I moved here to San Francisco. Wow wow wow! Wow! There is so much blossoming that has taken place within me and around me in this short period of time.

I am making decisions for myself that are bold. I am taking risks. I am surprised and delighted by my courage to experiment with living my life in new ways. The old ways of living my life worked -yet only to a certain extent – and now I am ready for a whole new expanded way of living life more fully embodied! More fully realizing the beauty within and the beauty and abundance all around me. Ahhhh…what liberation!

I am “treating” myself to a 3 hour yoga workshop today and I am so happy about this! I will gather with other women and do yoga, and be yoga, and engage in writing exercises to explore our intentions in life. I need this…a circle of women to feel a part of, to feel held in. This is my work…holding space for women, facilitating circles of women, and so this is such good medicine for me to give this to myself. To feel held and supported by a group of women. Yum, yum. I need the support to offer the support.

I have come a long way, baby, and in some ways, I am just getting started! YES!

Clarity and Harmony

I am filled with so much excitement! I am living one dream and continuing to create, allow, and manifest another, bigger vision that this dream is a part of! I am living in San Francisco…this is something that I have been dreaming about since last summer. And this is one piece of a bigger vision of bringing forth my gifts to the world and being of service. And really…this bigger vision is me playing FULL OUT in MY life!

Taking risks, being bold, being willing to say THIS IS WHAT I WANT and asking for it, being able to place my stake in the ground and claim THIS IS MY LIFE! And being willing to choose, day after day, moment after moment, the inner talk and outer actions that align together to birth myself and birth this greater vision.

That is a great image…birthing myself and my vision…birthing myself into the GREATER VISION that awaits me. That life is already there, just waiting to be lived. And my “job” is to “get out of my own way” so that I can just allow this into form.

I picked two angel cards this morning…”Clarity” and “Harmony”…

I have the clarity of a vision…working with women, empowering women, reaching large circles of women with my voice, my message of moving through our pain and into our power…

That clear vision is what inspires and informs my day-to-day actions and choices.

That clear vision invites me to be in harmony with myself…invites me to be congruent…for when my inner and outer worlds are aligned I just flow…and am carried by the bigger movement in my life.

I am committed to the small steps that are required to manifest my BIG VISION. Step by step, day by day, choice by choice…my COMMITMENT to my VISION is greater than any circumstances that could arise. I have placed my stake in the ground and claimed my life and my commitment. I am clear and in harmony. YES!

No Room for the Old Stories

So here I am in my new life and guess who hitchhiked a ride into it? All the old stories that I call, “blah-blah-blah”, or “fear-anxiety-doubt”.

You know Ram Dass’ statement of “Wherever you go, there you are.”?

Well lo and behold, that is exactly what I have been discovering. Here I am in SF with the same old stories from the past.

However, I also am here in SF with a renewed commitment to living my greatest life, to embodying my power and radiating my essence, to growing my practice and building a rich and multi-dimensional life for myself filled with all the people and activities and things that I love. Yes – I am committed to this!

And in my new home and new life in SF I have a choice…am I going to continue to allow “fear-anxiety-doubt” to plague my existence? They feel like an iron shackle thrown across my back, tightening on my head, squeezing down on my shoulders, virtually closing me off from my heart, my breath, and the opportunity to be in the divine flow.They keep me striving and efforting, trying to move forward feeling the pressure of all these hands on my back…telling me I need to do more and be more in order to survive.

OR, am I going to choose a new way?

This new way requires trust…and faith…in myself and the universe.

This new way opens me up to the divine flow, to the “a-ha’s” that come when I am tapped into my Source.

This new way allows me to be in balance with my yin-yang energies.

This new way increases my capacity to embody and radiate my power and my essence.

I choose a new way. This is the way I have been living my life, this is the way that brought me here to SF,  and I choose to continue this way…coming from Source, trusting in the goodness of myself and the Universe, and ENJOYING my existence! This is what I choose.

It is a choice I will get to make again and again and again. Everytime I hear those old voices of fear-doubt-anxiety I will get to remember the choice I am making. The choice of embodied-power, of trust.

Again and again I say YES to my fullness, to my power, to the richness of this one precious life that I get to call my own! YES!

Love Love Love

It is a day devoted to celebrating love in our lives! Oh, what a blessing!

What do you love? Who do you love?

Here is what I love–

myself, my family, my friends, my newly forming communities, my circles of women that I (used to) sit with;

places – San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, the StarHouse, Chautauqua, NY, Mount Tam, Sanitas, and so many more;

things – my special mug that I drink my mate tea out of almost every morning; the Golden Gate Bridge that I see out of my bedroom window; my bed; the lights that hang in my windows and the candles that spread their light; my incense; my dark blue blanket that I wrap around myself as I write;

and so much more…

Let’s share our love with our families, our communities, our world…let love prevail!